Interest rate-sensitive stocks end mixed

Interest rate-sensitive bank, auto and realty stocks ended on a mixed note after RBI today kept policy rates unchanged.
Among banking stocks, Bank of Baroda rose by 3.47 per cent, SBI was up 2.54 per cent and PNB gained 2.51 per cent. Yes Bank (0.96 per cent), AXIS Bank (0.62 per cent) and ICICI Bank (0.42 per cent) also posted gains at the BSE.
HDFC Bank, however, fell by 0.57 per cent.
The BSE banking index ended 0.47 per cent higher at 21,814.85 points.
From auto space, Ashok Leyland gained 3.59 per cent, Mahindra & Mahindra rose by 2.18 per cent, Bajaj Auto by 0.25 per cent and Maruti Suzuki India by 0.19 per cent.

On the other hand, shares of Hero MotoCorp were down 2.73 per cent and Tata Motors lost 1.85 per cent.

The BSE auto index closed with gains of 1 per cent at 19,440.12.
"The status-quo maintained by the RBI in terms of key policy rates was on expected lines," said Dinesh Thakkar, the Chairman and Managing Director of Angel Broking.
From realty stocks, Unitech lost 2.09 per cent, Godrej Properties slipped 1.69 per cent, Oberoi Realty was down 0.94 per cent, while Housing Development and Infrastructure Ltd (0.81 per cent), DLF (0.69 per cent) and Sobha Ltd (0.61 per cent) also fell.

The realty index settled on a sluggish note with losses of 0.18 per cent at 1,389.15.
In the broader market, the BSE Sensex ended the day with a loss of 115.13 points at 28,071.93.
Rebuffing pressure from the government to reduce cost of borrowing, RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan today kept interest rates unchanged, citing a spike in food prices and banks passing on to consumers only less than half of its previous rate cuts.
Rajan, in his third bi-monthly policy of the fiscal, left benchmark lending (repo) rate unchanged at 7.25 per cent as also the cash reserve ratio (CRR) at 4 per cent.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has already reduced the policy rate by a total of 75 basis points, or 0.75 per cent, since January, when it embarked on an easing cycle.